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CLASS OF i863 



OF 



HARVARD COLLEGE 



REPORT 



OF 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



CLASS OF i863 

OF 

HARVARD COLLEGE 



REPORT 

OF 

THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY 



CAMBRIDGE 

THE_ UNIVERSITY PRESS 

1914 






fe 






HARVAED COLLEGE. CLASS OF 1863. 



The Sixteenth Dinnek of the Class took place at the Parker 
House, Boston, June 18, 1913, the evening before Commence- 
ment. J. C. Warren presided; Allen, Chaplain; Morse, Odist; 
H. W. Warren, Chorister. Thirty-one members were present 
at this, the fiftieth anniversary of our graduation: Allen, Bailey, 
Baxter, Bowditch, Cobb, Cross, Denny, Drew, Edwards, Emer- 
son, Fairchild, Hall, Hammond, Higginson, Horton, Jackson, 
Kidder, Morse, Owen, Palmer, Pearce, Pillsbury, Pingree, Shat- 
tuck, Sheldon, Shreve, Tomlinson, H. W. Warren, J. C. Warren, 
E. S. Wheeler, White. 

Two fine large salmon were contributed to the dinner by Higgin- 
son, sent from the Ristigouche Salmon Club, Metapedia, Quebec. 
Other luxuries were not wanting, notwithstanding a poetical 
protest which the Secretary had received from Emerson to the 
following effect: 

Oh, Caterer, this Fiftieth year be wise! 
Think of our age in ordering your suppUes! 
Toss us no cocktail, open no Champagne, 
Let Burgundy and Hock in misty bins remain. 
In lieu of all temptations of that ilk 
Give us plain porridge and a bowl of nulk. 

The oyster and the Httle clam, we know, 
Offer no danger, left there where they grow, 
But served upon our board, on pearly shell, 
Their subtle juices threaten, — so 't were well 
In Heu of all temptation of that ilk 
To give plain porridge and a bowl of milk. 

Nor should smooth soup with an exotic name. 

Though pleasant to the taste, your suffrage claim; 

Nor savory roast, nor highly seasoned game. 

Such viands now we only know by name! 

In heu of all temptation of that ilk 

Give us plain porridge and a bowl of milk. 



2 CLASS OF 1863 OF HARVAKD COLLEGE. 

Nor for made dishes have we any use, 

Nor for sweet pudding, nor yet Charlotte Russe, 

No nuts, nor raisins, with forbidden pun, 

And no black coffee when the Feast is done. 

In lieu of all temptation of that ilk 

Give us plain porridge and a bowl of milk. 

So shall your Classmates, parting, blessings give, 
And thank you. Caterer, that they still live. 
No acute indigestion cut them down. 
Nor great-grandchildren meet them with a frown. 
In scorn of all the cookbook's spicy knowledge. 
They were regaled with milk and simple porridge. 

This matter having been referred to the Class Committee, 
it was voted: That any one so inclined could at the Class Dinner 
order plain porridge and a bowl of milk at the expense of the Class 
Fund. The Parker House bills, however, did not indicate that 
anyone had availed himself of this permission. 

After the material part of the dinner had been fully discussed, 
came the feast of reason and the flow of soul. J. C. Warren's 
address of welcome was as follows : 

Fellow Classmates: First of all, let me welcome you to these 
classic shades. It might be a cause for surprise to some of the 
younger classes that are holding gatherings this evening to hear 
me allude to Harvey Parker's house in such terms : biit did not a 
celebrated Western humorist, apparently getting a little mixed 
in his geography, upon one occasion, announce that Harvard Col- 
lege was pleasantly situated in a certain convivial section of this 
establishment? Somehow, whether for this reason or not, this old 
hostelry, one of the few of its kind that existed in the good town of 
Boston in our student days, and hallowed since by the memory 
of many historic gatherings, has always been associated in my mind 
with the first emancipation from the domestic discipline of boy- 
hood life and has helped to cast a glamour over the social pleasures 
of our first reunions as free and untrammelled personages. 

When your Secretary, to whom we all owe our thanks for 
this most excellently planned dinner, first suggested to me to 
preside, as this necessarily involved my sa3dng something about 
the Class of 1863, I experienced, I must confess, something of the 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 6 

feelings of the clergjnnan, in the ancient story, who was asked to 
deliver a eulogy at the obsequies of an aged sexton who had served 
the church faithfully for fifty years and had laid the parents of 
most of the congregation tenderly in their graves. In despair at 
having practically no material for his discourse, he bethought him- 
self of the historic periods through which this man had lived, and 
grew so eloquent over his theme that when he closed his congre- 
gation silently dispersed overcome with emotion. 

And so, like this resourceful gentleman, let us take a glance 
backward over our half-century; to the time when we first remem- 
ber the college yard, the quaint old buildings and the graceful 
elms all forming a picture of a typical country college, and try with 
me to recall its simple life, the entire absence of all household luxu- 
ries, considered today so indispensable a part of a well-ordered 
domestic establishment, and endeavor to realize that we accepted 
without a murmur what stood for them in the shape of the college 
pump and that appendage to University Hall which modem sani- 
tary science has long since happily swept away. 

With this vision still lingering in your minds, please follow me 
in the capacity of a college guide, as President Eliot was pleased 
recently to call me, and after passing Memorial Hall, which the 
present generation may not know stands on what we used to call 
the ''Delta'' and which with Cambridge Common served the 
purpose of an athletic field for our simple wants, let us wend our 
way up Divinity Avenue to the University Museum — that castle 
in the air of Louis Agassiz, now an enduring monument. A glance 
towards that terra incognita known as Norton's woods reveals a 
resplendent group of Gothic buildings which we are told is the 
New Andover Theological School. Passing round behind the 
Museum, we find almost a new University in groups of buildings 
covering what was known once as Holmes' field, and centering 
about the imposing home of that now most prosperous department 
of the University, the Law School. 

If I am not mistaken, the numerous quadrangles we find here 
are but the forerunners of still more ambitious extension plans 
which the Mackay foundation, backed by the schemes of the ener- 



4 CLASS OF 1863 OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 

getic Dean of the School of Applied Sciences, may bring about. 
Being careful not to lose your way, please, now follow Ihe back to 
and through the Yard down towards the river Charles. That 
seemed a good way off in our time, and few were attracted in that 
direction except those interested in rowing, who in those days were 
comparatively few in number. The way led then through slums 
and across vacant land lots to coal wharves and rudely built boat 
sheds perched high upon posts in a sluggish stream with muddy 
banks. Now, as we plunge down one of the streets leading in this 
direction from the vicinity of Harvard Square, we find ourselves 
surrounded by many beautiful buildings such as one might ex- 
pect to find in the '^ residential quarter '^ of a prosperous city — 
dormitories with all the up-to-date accessories, including even 
swimming tanks and tennis courts. Our old societies, which were 
quite content with a room in the college yard, now are housed in 
separate and ambitious buildings, and finally the "gold coast ^' 
itself bursts upon the view. 

It may seem to you a pity that all this decorative feature of the 
social side of student life should be hidden away in this region, but 
let me remind you that thoughtful friends of the University have 
bonded most of the land between the Yard and the new river front 
where the Freshmen Dormitories are in process of construction, 
and that when plans, now only in their inception, are finally car- 
ried out. Harvard College will find itself on the banks of a beau- 
tiful river — a "full basin" bordered by dignified embankments 
and spanned by the new Larz Anderson bridge. Do you remember 
that marsh across the river? Well, that is now the Soldiers' Field! 
Who would have thought it possible that such a desert spot could 
be turned into a beautiful meadow-like enclosure within which 
looms up the classic Stadium? 

Such are some of the changes which half a century has brought 
about in the home of our Alma Mater, and no wonder when we 
realize what these five decades stand for in the material develop- 
ment of our time. In those days a journey across the Atlantic was 
a genuine sea voyage, sails were trimmed still on the masts of At- 
lantic liners for favoring breezes, and travelers were made familiar 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 5 

with the boatswain's whistle and many of the common incidents of 
a sea-faring Hfe. There was no Atlantic cable, there were no Pull- 
man cars, a journey to New York took nine hours, and that marvel 
of our modern hustling daily life, the telephone, was still waiting 
for the inspiration of the brain of its great inventor; wild herds 
of buffalo still roamed over our prairies, and hostile Indians made 
a journey by the pony express a genuine Wild West Show for the 
few courageous travelers who dared attempt it. It is interesting 
in this connection to recall that our classmate Comte was the first 
citizen of the State of California to register as an undergraduate of 
Harvard College, and it is no wonder that we hear from his col- 
leagues of the Pacific slope that he still values the memories of those 
days and remains to this day a loyal and enthusiastic Alumnus. 

It would occupy more of your time than the occasion permits to 
attempt to enumerate the changes which we have all passed 
through since that time: how the perfection of the details of 
machinery have revolutionized transit on land and sea and even 
also in the air; what modem sanitary science has done for the 
preservation of human life, and how a high civilization has enabled 
us to look upon war as a relic of a primitive period and as a custom 
which we are trying to hope will sometime be a subject of historical 
interest only. 

And now let us see what kind of a role the Class of 1863 has 
played in this period of wonderful development. Graduating as 
we did just as the "high-water mark of the Rebellion" had been 
reached at Gettysburg, we were too young for any of our members 
to attain that rank and prominence which fell to many of the 
"upper classmen" of our time. That the class responded well to 
the country's call is attested by the fact that some fifty members 
did service in the army. Many had already left college for that 
purpose, and one member, Duim, was the first undergraduate of 
Harvard who died in the war. The gallantry of the gentle Crane 
and of Boynton, who fell together on the field of battle and near 
the works of the enemy while charging with their regiment at 
Graham Hill, was typical of the spirit which animated all. E. L. 
Stevens, who fell near Camden, South Carolina, on April 18, 1865, 



6 CLASS OF 1863 OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 

was said to have been the last officer of the Union armies killed 
in action. 

But peace brought opportunities for the class as well as war. In 
the great commercial and financial periods of development which 
followed, the good old Boston names of Amory, Bowditch, Hig- 
ginson and Jackson find an honored place. These activities were 
not confined to the home city, for did we not have in far-off China 
a representative in Drew, whose work we have watched with much 
wholesome pride and whom we one and all join in greeting today 
with a hearty welcome? The popular schools of Morse in New 
York and Nichols in Buffalo, and the work of H. W. Warren in 
Boston and of Pillsbury in the University of Illinois, as well as that 
of Dean Smith of Harvard, and of others, all testify to the good 
work done by the class in the cause of education. In the three pro- 
fessions of law, medicine, and divinity, the class was ably repre- 
sented, and the mere mention of the last of these brings to the 
minds of all the sad fate of Brooks and those harrowing lines of 
Virgil, "Heu miserande puer! si qua fata aspera rumpas, tu Mar- 
cellus eris." 

In no field of the world^s work have there been greater changes 
since our graduation than in that of medicine. Medicine came 
next as a life work in point of numbers to business and the law, and 
all its branches were creditably represented. Hall stands for the 
army surgeons, a group of men who have worked out problems 
which have revolutionized warfare and have shown at Panama that 
they can be as serviceable in times of peace as well, J. 0. Green 
for the pioneer specialist, a type which has since become so domi- 
nating as to threaten with extinction such faithful workers in the 
general practice of medicine as Cross, Hun, Shreve and many 
others. Then there are Mason, Shattuck and Warren, those terp- 
sichorean artists who have shown that lightness of foot is not in- 
compatible with a tactus eruditus. 

Our Class was partial to the law, and more members adopted it 
as their calling than entered either of the other learned professions. 
They spread widely over the country and rose to positions of 
prominence and responsibility — as witness Comte, framer of the 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 7 

charter of San Francisco and Supervisor of its county and city; 
Kilbreth, steadily rising and at the time of his death Collector of 
Customs of the Port of New York; and our first scholar, Sheldon, 
a Nestor of the Suffolk Bar. Nor should we forget Fairchild, who 
filled the role of a statesman as well as guardian of the nation^s 
treasury, and Greenhalge, Governor of Massachusetts. Recall 
with me a hay-loft behind Dr. Newell's church in which were 
gathered excited members of the Class of '63 listening intently to a 
young orator perched upon an upturned barrel. The picture of 
the boy Greenhalge, as he stretched out his arms and began an 
impassioned address with the opening word "Classmates!'' is 
graven on my memory, as is also the conviction then and there 
formed that the Class would hear from him again in later years. 
Law also was the profession of that "ideal Class Secretary, "Arthur 
Lincoln, who more than any member of the Class would have 
wished to be here today and than whom no one is more missed 
by us. 

I have alluded to the great changes in trafl&c and transportation, 
uniting eventually the East to the West, which have occurred in 
our time. The demand for engineers thus created was met by the 
Class in furnishing the versatile Morison, equally proficient in 
bridging great rivers, giving counsel to the nation at Panama, and 
fulfilling the task of orator to the Phi Beta Kappa. 

In literature and the fine arts the Class had brilliant represen- 
tatives, and in producing John Fiske made an achievement which 
its contemporaries will find hard to match. The reading public, 
wherever the English language is spoken, will gladly acknowledge 
their indebtedness to the phenomenal Curtin, who discovered for 
them "Quo Vadis" and gave them much myth and folk lore. 
Bowditch's name deserves mention here again for his contribu- 
tions to archaeology. 

Lastly comes our Class Poet, whose brush has made us forget 
that he could have shone in letters as well, and has associated his 
name with one of the greatest living representatives of the paint- 
er's art (Sargent). Boit wrote a poem which his classmates take 
enduring pleasure in reading over again. 



8 CLASS OF 1863 OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 

His final picture of our oldest living member, then so far away 
and now so near, appeals to us today with new meaning. And of 
the old man's message to the Keeper of the College Records — 

"With manly courage and with honest hearts 
On Life's wide stage they played their various parts. 
All strove alike with powers, some more, some less, 
And all deserved while some achieved success, 
Some died in youth and manhood, some in age. 
None left a blot on this unblemished page" — 

can we not say that, so far, we have made it "good and true"? 

The Secretary regrets that, in the absence of any shorthand 
report of the evening's proceedings, he cannot record the speeches 
that were made by Jackson, Drew, Wheeler, Pearce, Palmer, 
Sheldon, Fairchild, Bailey and others. They were informal, but 
full of good fellowship and loyalty to the Class and the College. 
Bowditch recited the Dirge written by Boit for the Burial of the 
Football in our Sophomore year: 

"Ah! Woe betide the luckless time, 
When manly sports decay," etc. 

The Ode written by Morse for the Fiftieth Anniversary was 
sung to the air of " 'T was off the Blue Canaries": 

A song for the ripened harvest — 

For the Fiftieth gathering-in; 
A song of praise for long-gone days 

And the glories that have been! 
And let the note have a tender strain 

And a music soft and low; 
For the Mother made us sons of men 

With the love of long ago. 

Chorus: With the love of long ago — 
With the love of long ago; 
For the Mother made us sons of men 
With the love of long ago. 

Remember the hfted lashes 

That shone like dews at mom, 
When the sowers go forth to scatter 

The seed of the golden corn, — 
The hand that clasped a brother's hand, 

The tears that would not flow; 
For the Mother made us sons of men 

With the love of long ago. 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 

We have welcomed the lilt of morning, 

Rejoiced in the day's increase; 
A sinking sun, and the long day done, 

When the laborer sings of peace. 
Let the cup go round, the music sound, 

And the love-light not burn low; 
For the Mother made us sons of men 

With the love of long ago. 

Allen read the following verses: 

SIXTY-THREE 

The long day Hngers to its close; 

The Sim's meridian height is past. 
The level shadow longer grows, 

And evening's leisure comes at last. 

Like httle children, after play 
And task and toil, we wearied come. 

By different paths we wend our way; 
For Alma Mater calls us home. 

And now with backward glance we scan 
Our journey long: its scenes explore; 

The hopes and fears from boy to man; 
Our dear companions gone before. 

What treasured charm these memories yield! 

The gallant group, at Country's call 
Who died upon the battle field, 

Whose window shines in yonder hall. 

And many others, longer spared. 

Whose varied worth our friendship won. 

Who, noble tasks for mankind dared. 
And heard the Master's praise, "Well done." 

To some, less fortunate than they, 
Our thought in tender pity goes. 

They missed the goal and lost their way. 
O'er them our love its mantle throws. 

There is a Power Divine presides 
O'er all our joy, o'er aU our grief. 

"Lord, we beheve," — our trust confides, 
"Help thou, O Lord, our unbehef." 

Our fifty years but closer bind 

In one, upon this Jubilee, 
Our dead and living, intertwined; 

The gallant Class of Sixty-Three. 



10 CLASS OF 1863 OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 

Emerson expressed the spirit of the evening in the following 
lines, which he read with much feeling: 

They tell us to look forward and not backward. 

As Classmates we do quite the other thing; 
Call up the Past and waken pleasant echoes 

By touching Memory's string. 

We hear our youthful voices cachinnating, 
In changing group of scrimmage or of romp; 

We drink in germs, as yet unnamed, unnumbered, 
Out of the College Pump. 

And later, scattered, what dehght to greet 
A Classmate, unexpected, wheresoever! 
^ On train, on shipboard, or in neighboring street, 

Or, happier yet, in foreign land to meet. 

So, like to brothers, are we Unked together, 
Those who have gone — and, still existing, we; 

The tie of Classmate binding us forever, 
The Class of Sixty-Three! 

Our old Class Song by Brooks was sung: 

CLASS SONG 
Air, Mourir pour la Patrie. 

We are one in the joy and the sorrow; . 

We are one in the loss and the gain; 
Not alone in the hope of tomorrow. 

But in memories glad that remain. 

Chorus: Again old joys are o'er us. 
Old voices fill our chorus. 
And ever through the years 
We shall hear our parting cheers, — 

Hurrah, Sixty-Three! 
Hurrah for our own Sixty-Three! 

'T is the parting of brother from brother, 

Yet today shall but strengthen the bond; 
It shall stretch from one year and another, 

Only lost in the union beyond. 

Make the voice of our gladness the clearer! 

It must speak in our trouble and toil; 
Draw the ranks of our brotherhood nearer! 

They may narrow, but must not recoil. 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 11 

For our place has already been taken 

By the Hves whose glad labor is done; 
By their glory, which cannot be shaken, 

We are pledged to their contest till won. 

After joining hands for a verse of "Auld Lang Syne'' we sep- 
arated, to meet next day at Holworthy 19, where all the Dinner 
company were present except Emerson, who was afraid he would 
not be able to get "Plain porridge and a bowl of milk," and 
Horton, who had to leave for Europe on a steamer sailing that 
day. In addition we had at Cambridge W. F. Jones, always de- 
voted in his attendance at Class Meetings, but who had not been 
able to be present at the Dinner. 

After a light repast at our room and the usual Class Meeting 
we adjourned at a few minutes before twelve and all went to 
Phillips Brooks House to act as hosts in receiving and enter- 
taining the older graduates of the College and other invited 
guests. Invitations had been issued to the number of about six 
hundred and fifty, and nearly two hundred and fifty acceptances 
had been received. The reception lasted from 12 m. to 1.30 p. m., 
and then the Class was escorted to its place in the procession 
for Sever Quadrangle, where the Alumni Association exercises 
took place and Sheldon spoke in response for the Class of 1863. 
Before 4.30 p. m. all was over and the members of the Class 
scattered. 

Prof. LeB. R. Briggs, '75, President of the Alumni Association, 
in introducing Sheldon, spoke as follows: This is the seventy- 
fifth anniversary of the Class of 1838, and each of the surviving 
members of that Class was invited to be with us today. Not one 
could come. Yesterday there were three surviving members; 
today there are but two, for Dr. Coolidge, our oldest graduate, 
died last night on the night of the seventy-fifth anniversary 
of his graduation. 

The Class of 1863 is here. To a man who came out of Harvard 
College in 1863 there was one great call. Henry Newton Sheldon, 
A. B., became Lieutenant Sheldon of the 55th Massachusetts 
Infantry. First the schoolboy, then the soldier (full of strange 



12 CLASS OF 1863 OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 

oaths) and then the justice. Mr. Justice Sheldon will speak 
for the Class that celebrates its fiftieth anniversary today. 

Sheldon said : 

We who have now for fifty years been engaged in the active 
work of manhood appreciate the kindly good will which affords 
us this opportunity of expressing our devotion to the University. 
And yet this very kindliness brings with it a certain measure of 
sadness. It is a recognition of the fact that we have now reached 
whatever goal was capable of attainment by us. This morning 
we looked forward to resuming our places upon the battle-line; 
now we are bidden to return to our homes and there rest upon 
our memories, or, at any rate, to take no further part in the com- 
bats of our fellows. Our course is regarded as ended; it is an 
accounting that we are called upon to render. 

As a class, we feel a kind of exultation. There is no sphere or 
department in which some of our members have not attained emi- 
nence. We have public men who have sat in the national cab- 
inet, in the governor's chair, and in other seats of the mighty, 
both at home and abroad. We have clergymen whose names 
command love and admiration; physicians and surgeons whose 
learning and abilities have been recognized by the University 
and among the public at large; professors and teachers whose 
services here and in other institutions have been of high value; 
lawyers of repute; scholars and men of letters whose works have 
gained them distinction; artists, philanthropists, devotees of 
science, men of affairs; all of them 

" Strong to keep upright the old 

And wise to buttress with the new, 
Prudent as ever are the bold, 
Clear-eyed as only are the true." 

All of them men who have met the problems of life and have 
made the world the better for their existence. And if the lives 
of some of us have been more obscure than is the case with those 
to whom I have referred, this may serve to add the grace of 
modesty to what as a Class we have achieved. 

We were graduated in those stirring days when our national 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY. 13 

existence was at stake; when, according to the sneers of some and 
the fears of others, the Republican bubble had burst; when it was 
yet to be determined whether freedom or slavery should be 
dominant in a large part of our country. To us, who grew up 
in the storms which preceded and brought on that crisis, nothing 
else can seem equal in importance to the issues that were then 
presented. Like the rest of our countrymen, we faced the ordeal. 
Nearly fifty, almost half of our number, took up arms; many 
others, in work for the soldier or the freedman, did service not 
so conspicuous, but no less real. One of our number, whose name 
I do not mention because he is here present, was the first under- 
graduate who left the college to join the army; another, Dunn, 
was the first undergraduate to give up his life in the cause of 
liberty; another, E. L. Stevens, was the last graduate who won 
"the great prize of death in battle.'* They all did as they had 
opportunity; we cherish the memory of all of them. 

Other well-deserving names come to mind: Frederick Brooks, 
not the least richly endowed of a richly endowed family, who in 
barely eleven years had shown qualities and wrought results which 
had gained for him an appreciation and a wealth of affection such 
as can come to but few in the longest of lives, to whom we his 
classmates especially owe our Class Song, so charged with feeling, 
so lofty in sentiment, which is dearer and dearer to us with every 
passing year; John Fiske, scholar, historian, philosopher, whom 
it is enough to name here; Gorham P. Stevens, whom adverse fates 
did not sujffer even to begin his career, whose unusual powers 
were matched only by his ardor for his ideals; Bishop, the devout 
clergyman, "whose armor was l^is honest thought, and simple 
truth his utmost skill"; Lawrence, Jenks, Harris, those other 
men of God; Greenhalge, poet, orator, statesman, to whose 
public services the Commonwealth owes so much; Morison, 
"bridge-builder, hammerer, youngest son of Thor," who has 
left enduring monuments of his labors; Arthur Lincoln, the gentle- 
minded, whose modesty and simplicity could not conceal his high 
qualities, whom we love, who loved us, and whose loss we shall 
not cease to mourn. But I may not name them all. We would 



14 CLASS OF 1863 OF HARVARD COLLEGE. 

wish our Class to be judged by the lives of those and all of those 
''whose glad labor is done." We who survive may well be con- 
tent if our names may be inscribed upon the same roll with theirs. 
Our Class is but one among many; and we claim for it no special 
distinction above the rest. Like others, we feel that it was our 
own fault if we failed to profit somewhat by the four years that 
we spent at this seat of learning and in this company of scholars. 
At least we have learned the better to understand the brotherhood 
of all men from the extent to which we have found ourselves 
bound together into one organic whole. Perhaps a chief feature 
of our Class has been the corporate sentiment, the feeling of sol- 
idarity, that has united us. The key-note of that feeling was 
struck by Brooks, when with the unerring foresight of genius 
he put at the beginning of our Class Song the words 

"We are one in the joy and the sorrow, 
We are one in the loss and the gain. " 

That was and ever since has been our feeling; that feeling will 
abide with us until we shall all have passed into the hereafter. 

E. R. Thayer of '88, Dean of the Law School, was the next 
speaker, and your Secretary takes the liberty of transcribing 
from the Harvard Alumni Bulletin the beginning of his remarks, 
thinking that they cannot fail to be of interest to all of us. He 
said: 

The Class of 1888 is passing before the reviewing stand after one 
long stage of the march on which it set out twenty-five years ago 
— that forced march which, as we look back, seems to us so 
strangely swift. As we pause here for a moment midway in our 
journey, our thoughts naturally turn to our brothers twenty-five 
years before us, who are celebrating their golden anniversary, 
and to those others who stand today on the threshold. 

The Class of 1863, as Mr. Justice Sheldon has but slightly and 
modestly pointed out, stepped from the college halls into the scene 
of the Civil War, and did its duty in a fashion which makes its 
story a part of the great epic of Harvard. From that Class she 
sent 



THE FIFTIETH ANNIVERSAEY. 15 

"Her wisest scholars, those who understood 
The deeper teachings of her mystic tome 
And offered their fresh Kves to make it good." 

To some of them death in their country's cause came quickly 
on the field of battle. Others came back to serve truth on other 
fields. To few indeed came such opportunities for service as to 
the speaker who has just sat down. I cannot decently character- 
ize in his presence a career which has long since received from 
Harvard her meed of highest honor, but I should like to take 
issue with his suggestion that his work is in any sense closed. 
I make bold to say that in our great court there is no younger 
and no better judge — I put it conservatively — than he. As 
he was the first scholar at college in the Class of 1863, so he has 
ever been first to those who have practiced before him as a judge 
in the Superior Court and in the Supreme Judicial Court. Some- 
times at this season it is asked, — what are the colleges doing for 
the State? So long as the colleges of New England can furnish 
to the Bench of Massachusetts — Harvard a Sheldon, Yale a 
Knowlton, Amherst a Rugg — they need not fear that question. 



Boston, February 15, 1914. 



Clakence H. Dennt, 

Class Secretary. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



029 911 305 A 



